[msb-alumni] William Ruckelshaus, Who Defied Nixon And Quit, Dies at 87 on June 10, 2020
- From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2020 17:45:08 -0400
BlankWilliam Ruckelshaus, Who Defied Nixon And Quit, Dies at 87. By Robert D.
McFadden.
As deputy attorney general he refused Nixon's order to fire the special
prosecutor
Archibald Cox in the Watergate scandal. He was earlier the E.P.A.'s first
leader.
William D. Ruckelshaus, who resigned as deputy attorney general rather than
carry out
President Richard M. Nixon's illegal order to fire the independent special
Watergate
prosecutor in the constitutional crisis of 1973 known as the "Saturday Night
Massacre," died on Wednesday at his home in Seattle. He was 87. His death was
confirmed by his daughter Mary Ruckelshaus.
A lawyer and political troubleshooter, Mr. Ruckelshaus twice headed the United
States
Environmental Protection Agency, as its founding administrator from 1970 to
1973
under Nixon, and from 1983 to 1985 under President Ronald Reagan. He won praise
for
laying the new agency's foundations, and later for salvaging an E.P.A. that had
strayed from its mission and lost the confidence of the public and Congress.
Mr. Ruckelshaus was a champion of America's natural resources in his home state
of
Indiana; in Washington State, where he lived; and while serving on presidential
commissions and conservation groups. But he also worked for big business, was
not an
environmentalist of the Greenpeace and Sierra Club stripe, and in 50 years of
public
and private service was hailed and vilified by partisans on both sides as he
tried to
balance economic and ecological interests.
For many Americans, however, the deeds of Mr. Ruckelshaus's varied career were
all
but eclipsed by his role in the events of a single night in the autumn of 1973,
as
the political dirty tricks and cover-up conspiracies of the Watergate scandal
closed
in on his boss, the beleaguered President Nixon.
The scandal had already forced some of Nixon's closest associates to resign and
face
criminal charges, and Mr. Ruckelshaus, with his E.P.A. successes and reputation
for
integrity, was named acting head of the F.B.I. in April 1973, replacing L.
Patrick
Gray III, who had allowed Nixon aides to examine Watergate files and had even
destroyed evidence in the case.
Mr. Ruckelshaus was soon named the top deputy to Attorney General Elliot L.
Richardson. And on a night of high drama, as the nation held its breath and
constitutional government appeared to hang in the balance, Nixon ordered his
top
three Justice Department officials, one after another, to fire the Watergate
prosecutor, Archibald Cox, rather than comply with his subpoena for nine
incriminating Oval Office tape recordings.
Mr. Cox's complete independence had been guaranteed by Nixon and the attorney
general
during the prosecutor's Senate confirmation hearings the previous May. He could
be
removed only for 'cause' -- some gross malfeasance in office.
But none was even alleged. Nixon's order to summarily dismiss Mr. Cox thus
raised a
most profound question: Was the president above the law?
Mr. Richardson and Mr. Ruckelshaus refused to fire Mr. Cox and resigned even as
orders for their own dismissals were being issued by the White House.
But Robert H. Bork, the United States solicitor general -- and the acting
attorney
general after the dismissal of his two superiors, carried out the presidential
order
The dismissals, all on Saturday, Oct. 20, labeled the "Saturday Night Massacre"
by
news media, set off a firestorm of protest across the country. Some 300,000
telegrams
inundated Congress and the White House, mostly calling for Nixon's resignation.
The
outcry was so ferocious that the White House said within days that it had
decided to
surrender the tape recordings after all.
Less than a month later, a federal judge ruled that Mr. Cox's dismissal had
been
illegal and ordered him reinstated, but Mr. Cox indicated that he did not want
the
job back.
After a protracted legal struggle, scores of tapes were eventually turned over
to Mr.
Cox's successor, Leon Jaworski, and Mr. Nixon, facing certain impeachment in
the
House and conviction in the Senate, resigned in August 1974.
Vice President Gerald R. Ford assumed the presidency, Mr. Cox returned to
teaching at
Harvard, Mr. Richardson was named Mr. Ford's commerce secretary in 1976, and
Mr. Bork
became a federal judge whose nomination to the Supreme Court by President
Reagan in
1987 was defeated in the Senate.
Mr. Ruckelshaus, who joined a Washington law firm and soon moved to Seattle,
said he
had no regrets.
"I thought what the president was doing was fundamentally wrong," he told The
New
York Times years later. "I was convinced that Cox had only been doing what he
had the
authority to do; what was really of concern to the president and the White
House was
that he was too close. He hadn't engaged in any extraordinary improprieties,
quite
the contrary."
William Doyle Ruckelshaus was born on July 24, 1932, in Indianapolis, the
second of
three children of John K. and Marion (Doyle) Ruckelshaus. His father was a
lawyer and
Republican Party official who drowned at 60 in a fishing accident in Michigan.
Mr.
Ruckelshaus remembered him as deeply religious and called him "far and away the
biggest influence' on his life."
"He not only was religious in the sense of being a regular churchgoer; he went
to
church every morning for the last 25 years of his life and took communion," Mr.
Ruckelshaus said in an interview for an E.P.A. publication. "But he lived it."
William went to Roman Catholic parochial schools in Indianapolis and, midway
through
high school, transferred to Portsmouth Abbey, a school run by Benedictine monks
in
Portsmouth, R.I.
After two years in the Army, he attended Princeton University and graduated
with
honors in 1957, then earned a law degree from Harvard in 1960.
In 1960 he married Ellen Urban, who died of complications of giving birth to
twin
girls in 1961.
In 1962 he married Jill Elizabeth Strickland, who survives him along with their
children, Jennifer and William Ruckelshaus and Robin Kellogg; his twin
daughters,
Catherine and Mary Ruckelshaus; a sister, Marion Ruckelshaus Bitzer; and 12
grandchildren.
As a deputy attorney general in Indiana in the early 1960s, Mr. Ruckelshaus
helped
write the state's first air pollution control laws. A leader of the Young
Republican
organization, he won a seat in the Indiana House of Representatives in 1966 and
became the first freshman legislator to be elected majority leader.
In 1968 he lost a United States Senate race to the Democratic incumbent, Birch
Bayh.
But he caught the eye of Attorney General John N. Mitchell and was brought to
Washington in 1969 as an assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice
Department's civil division.
He displayed exceptional finesse cooling anti-Vietnam War protests, civil
rights
confrontations and unrest on college campuses.
Nixon was impressed.
In 1970 he appointed Mr. Ruckelshaus to lead the new E.P.A. He proceeded to
consolidate 15 federal agencies with environmental duties into an organization
with
8,800 employees and a $2.5 billion budget (about $15.6 billion in today's
money),
hired new leaders, defined priorities, proposed laws and organized a national
enforcement structure. He also ordered cities to curtail sewage discharges into
rivers; demanded more air-pollution controls; accused paper and steel companies
of
water-quality violations; and banned the domestic use of DDT.
Environmental advocates were generally pleased, although Mr. Ruckelshaus was
not a
consistent ally. He permitted states to write business-friendly air quality
plans and
allowed increased emissions in areas where the air was relatively clean, a
stand that
federal courts later called a violation of the Clean Air Act of 1970.
By 1973, Mr. Ruckelshaus was needed back at the Justice Department. After his
interim
appointment at the F.B.I., he pursued charges that Vice President Spiro T.
Agnew had
taken kickbacks from contractors while governor of Maryland. The case led to
Mr.
Agnew's no-contest plea on a tax-evasion charge and his resignation on Oct. 10,
1973.
After his own resignation in the Saturday Night Massacre 10 days later, Mr.
Ruckelshaus returned to private law practice. He moved to Seattle in 1976 and
became
a senior vice president of Weyerhaeuser, one of the nation's largest lumber
companies.
He explored a run for the presidency in 1980 but did not return to public life
until
1983, when President Reagan asked him to take over the troubled E.P.A.
After 22 months under Anne Gorsuch Burford, who had resigned in a scandal over
mismanagement of a $1.6 billion program to clean up hazardous waste sites, the
agency
was demoralized and its programs riddled with corruption. Its budget had been
heavily
cut, and critics said it had openly favored polluters and abandoned its mission
to
protect the nation's air, water and land resources.
Mr. Ruckelshaus stabilized the agency, restored professional management and
subdued
the scandals. But he was unable to rebuild the budget, and many E.P.A.
initiatives
were mired in court or stifled by Congress or business interests supported by
the
administration.
After Reagan's second term began, Mr. Ruckelshaus resigned, returned to
Seattle,
joined a law firm and set up an environmental consulting business.
From 1988 to 1995, Mr. Ruckelshaus was chief executive of Browning-Ferris
Industries,
one of the nation's largest waste-removal firms, whose rapid expansion had led
to
civil and criminal complaints and fines in the disposal of toxic substances.
Mr.
Ruckelshaus took the company out of hazardous wastes and built up its recycling
operations. The company also expanded into New York City, where Mr. Ruckelshaus
helped investigators infiltrate a Mafia-dominated carting conspiracy, leading
prosecutors to obtain indictments.
President George W. Bush named Mr. Ruckelshaus to the United States Commission
on
Ocean Policy, which produced a 2004 report, "An Ocean Blueprint for the 21st
Century."
In 2008, Mr. Ruckelshaus was named to the Washington State Puget Sound
Partnership.
Late in life, Mr. Ruckelshaus brought his Watergate experience to bear on
another
president under investigation. This time it was President Donald J. Trump, who
at the
time was furious over the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation
of
Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election.
"Not only was that Saturday night the beginning of the end of the Nixon
presidency,"
Mr. Ruckelshaus wrote in The Washington Post in August 2018, referring to the
"massacre," "but it also accelerated the growing wave of political cynicism and
distrust in our government we are still living with today. One manifestation of
that
legacy: a president who will never admit he uttered a falsehood and a Congress
too
often pursuing only a partisan version of the truth."
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